Induction heating is often used for heating products. Elongated metallic products can be passed through an induction coil for heating.
GB-A-2124660 discloses a method for annealing non-ferrous strip material by passing the strip around a pair of spaced pulleys and effecting a short circuit between incoming and outgoing strip material to form a closed electrical loop of strip material moving around the pulleys. In that specification, the incoming and outgoing strip material are in contact at one of the pulleys, being located in the same single groove of the pulley. A length of material is caused to traverse the loop by driving the material through friction from one of the pulleys. The incoming strip of material travels outside the plane of the loop and is deflected into that plane by a series of additional pulleys arranged in a spiral before it contacts the loop.
This method of applying drive to and feeding material into the loop is sometimes not satisfactory and the present invention has been devised to provide an improved driving arrangement and/or an improved means of feeding strip into the loop.